


Rachel's Return

by TransWonderWoman



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Background Poly, Background Relationships, F/F, Flashbacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tattoos, post current canon as of Feb 2019 wrt Rachel and Kitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 07:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17935166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TransWonderWoman/pseuds/TransWonderWoman
Summary: Rachel Grey is back, and her body feels like an alien thing. Something disconnected and unknowable, anonymous and strange. So she gets a tattoo!





	Rachel's Return

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in basically one sitting, with a few tweaks afterwards. please a) be kind but also b) give feedback if you have some

Standing outside New York City’s preeminent mutant tattoo parlor, Rachel felt a shiver run through her. She had never been more scared about something so normal. It seemed like these days everyone had tattoos, her facial markings no longer making her stand out quite so much. And yet. Here she stood, petrified. Again she stood in a modern American city and felt out of place, out of time, just back from another jaunt into the time-stream with her captors. 

Suddenly, a warm hand took Rachel’s own and Rachel had to suppress a flinch of surprise. Somehow in the minutes she had been standing out here, she had forgotten Kitty was standing beside her.

_She’s so beautiful_ , Rachel thought, fixing her gaze on Kitty’s curls, allowing herself to be swept away in a moment of sentimentality. She reveled in Kitty’s presence, treasuring every moment she and Kitty spend together. Every day she woke up she was grateful that she had a place in her darling Kitty’s heart, a heart so big and encompassing and forgiving and beneficent it included both her, an unforgivable species traitor, and Illyana, who on a good day could be called somewhat demonic. _I don’t deserve her._

_None of that_ , Kitty’s thoughts suddenly rang out in her head. “We agreed that you wouldn’t be doing that this time around.” She said this out-loud, to ground Rachel in the now, remind her that yet again she was free of Ahab’s clutches. 

“We don’t have to go in Rachel,” Kitty assured her, gesturing towards the door. “We can just go home and watch the danger room sim Kurt’s cooked up.” Kurt had recently discovered the joy of acting and spent time recording himself playing out fanciful scenarios in the danger room that could then be played back from the comfort of the viewing station. It had become a hot commodity among the students and faculty alike, and Kurt found himself inundated with script offers from interested parties. For an entirely unprofessional endeavor it was getting remarkable traction. 

“No, Cat,” Rachel said. “I want to do this. This time, with Ahab,” she stopped to shudder once again. “I feel like my body isn’t mine anymore. I need to do something about that or i don’t know what i will do.”

Kitty softened and said, “We should all be so lucky to know our bodies are our own.” She then took a step forward and phased her way through the door of the tattoo parlor, still holding Rachel’s hand. Rachel followed along, shaking her head at the needless dramatics of Kitty’s choice of entrances, but secretly she thrilled that Kitty always made every moment together fun. 

Blinking in the harsh lights of the reception area, Rachel found herself facing a Black woman with a large set of fins on the backs of her arms and along her back standing behind the counter, entirely unfazed by Kitty and Rachel’s appearance. She looked them over and asked calmly, “You have an appointment?”

Kitty nodded and pulled Rachel forward, saying “Yeah it's this one who is getting the tattoo. The design we talked about?” Rachel and Kitty had been here before, showing an entirely different catlike woman the design. When asked as to whether she would be the tattoo artist, she said that yes she would be, but not physically. Apparently, as a telepathic artist with no opposable thumbs, she worked best through willing hosts artist bodies, making all her works a sort of collaborative process between her and her host. Rachel thought she could understand that. The feeling of your body not being enough, but having the mental skill to make what you see in your mind real anyway. It seemed like an intriguing business model, in any case. 

Kitty squeezed her hand, once again reminding Rachel that she was here, and to some degree was required to interact with people in the same timescale that she was currently occupying. She swallowed hard, nodded, and allowed herself to be led to the chair.

It looked dangerous, all red and black, with wicked looking instruments right beside it. Rachel’s heart was in her throat. She was terrified and excited and unsure and certain all at once. Somewhere in the distance she could feel her heart beating, her mind racing, memories of Franklin and Ahab and mom all crashing together at once.

And then there was Kitty. An oasis in the middle of the hell that her mind had become. Kitty seemed to glow under the lights of the parlor, as she soothed Rachel’s hair back and guided her into the seat. From there, Rachel looked into Kitty’s eyes, and longed to bury herself inside Kitty’s mind for the rest of time. To abandon this shell and live as one with Kitty forever and ever. But Kitty put her hand on Rachel’s cheek and she could never give up a sensation like that. That feeling of love and kindness and care that Kitty could radiate.

“You ready Rache?” Kitty whispered. 

And Rachel found herself tearing up but saying a hoarse “Yes please.”

The tattoo artist(s) Brenda-working-through-Trish swabbed the area of her upper arm and pulled out her stencil. The area was relatively small requiring no more than this one visit, hopefully. Rachel turned away to look at Kitty and said, in what she hoped wasn’t too desperate a tone of voice, “Distract me.” 

Kitty launched into a rambling tale of her latest adventure with her other girlfriend, Illyana. ‘Yana always seemed to take Kitty to wild and unsettling locations for their dates, as if in part to impress her and partially to scare her off. Rachel could understand that impulse, the desire to hold Kitty close and simultaneously save her through distance. To rescue her from her own kindness. But Kitty was a stubborn jerk really often and just wouldn’t let her troubled women go. For which they both were assuredly grateful. 

As Kitty’s story went on, her grip on Rachel’s hand loosened and eventually dropped, as Kitty required the use of both her hands in order to adequately speak. Rachel loved seeing Kitty swept away by her own story, which had diverged into a recitation of meeting Marrow in a sewer a few years back and having a wildly unexpected make-out session, but the buzzing of the needle was starting to dig its way into Rachel’s head. The Buzzing of the needle became the Hum of machines, the acrid smell of electricity in the air, the taste of blood on her tongue, as the machines chased her, changed her. She felt the pain, and the awful terrible joy of belonging to Ahab, of doing his bidding, and the guilt that made her want to die. She began to see her friends fall, her father incinerated, the whirr of servos in the sentinels as they watched her from above. 

She found herself suddenly once again in the tattoo parlor, tears streaming from her eyes, Kitty’s hands holding her face still, her thumbs wiping away tears. 

“Is this too much?” Kitty asked. “Because if you want we can leave now. Elixir will heal the skin and there won’t be a single sign of this at all. Is that what you need?”

And Rachel’s heart could have cracked open on the spot, she would be happy if she never moved on from the moment, trapped by Kitty, under her control, the focus of all her energy and thoughts right now. And for a moment Rachel thought that this was enough. Going through this, that was fine, her body was hers if she decided it was. But then she thought that she wanted to remember this moment, this experience. This beautiful sight of Kitty staring at her with nothing but love and concern and possessive protectiveness. 

“No. I want to keep going,” Rachel said, seeming to surprise both Kitty and Brenda-as-Trish, who may not have heard Rachel’s voice at all today. _I want you here with me on this step_ , Rachel sent to Kitty, along with a wave of feeling, wrapping herself around Kitty’s mind and hugging it as tightly as Kitty was holding her face.

Kitty laughed and began to pepper her face with kisses, distracting her more and more from the whirs and pains of the needle. It could have been only a few more minutes or hours, before it ended and Rachel wouldn’t have known, wrapped up as she was in Kitty’s kisses, and tender words whispered in her ear. But once it was finished, Trish tapped Kitty’s arm and showed them the work.

It was red and swollen at the moment, but it was perfect. There, in Kitty’s script, was the phrase “The Way Out is Through” arched over the image of a small red nestling bird poking its way out of its eggshell. And Rachel felt a kind of wholeness that had been missing for a long time, a connection to the physical that stunned her. The ache in her arm, it made sense. She knew she was here, in the present, in this universe, with Kitty and not Ahab and not Mesmero or anyone else. She was a person and her body was hers. She wasn’t fixed, she wasn’t suddenly unbroken. But she was here. Here was an anchor.

“It’s perfect.” She whispered, with Kitty beaming beside her and the tattoo artist gathering the moisturizing cream and bandages that she would need to care for it. 

“You’re perfect,” Kitty whispered back. “When you aren’t being an asshole.”

And Rachel barked out a laugh at this observation, so perfectly timed, and bent down and kissed Kitty once more.


End file.
